Director, Applied AI

Purpose of the role

To lead and manage engineering teams, providing technical guidance, mentorship, and support to ensure the delivery of high-quality software solutions, driving technical excellence, fostering a culture of innovation, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to align technical decisions with business objectives. 

Accountabilities

• Lead engineering teams effectively, fostering a collaborative and high-performance culture to achieve project goals and meet organizational objectives.
• Oversee timelines, team allocation, risk management and task prioritization to ensure the successful delivery of solutions within scope, time, and budget.
• Mentor and support team members' professional growth, conduct performance reviews, provide actionable feedback, and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Evaluation and enhancement of engineering processes, tools, and methodologies to increase efficiency, streamline workflows, and optimize team productivity.
• Collaboration with business partners, product managers, designers, and other stakeholders to translate business requirements into technical solutions and ensure a cohesive approach to product development.
• Enforcement of technology standards, facilitate peer reviews, and implement robust testing practices to ensure the delivery of high-quality solutions.

Director Expectations

• To manage a business function, providing significant input to function wide strategic initiatives. Contribute to and influence policy and procedures for the function and plan, manage and consult on multiple complex and critical strategic projects, which may be business wide..
• They manage the direction of a large team or sub-function, leading other people managers and embedding a performance culture aligned to the values of the business. Or for an individual contributor, they lead organisation wide projects and act as deep technical expert and thought leader, identifying new ways of working and collaborating cross functionally. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..
• Provide expert advice to senior functional management and committees to influence decisions made outside of own function, offering significant input to function wide strategic initiatives.
• Manage, coordinate and enable resourcing, budgeting and policy creation for a significant sub-function.
• Escalates breaches of policies / procedure appropriately.
• Foster and guide compliance, ensure regulations are observed that relevant processes in place to facilitate adherence.
• Focus on the external environment, regulators, or advocacy groups to both monitor and influence on behalf of Barclays, when appropriate.
• Demonstrate extensive knowledge of how the function integrates with the business division / Group to achieve the overall business objectives.
• Maintain broad and comprehensive knowledge of industry theories and practices within own discipline alongside up-to-date relevant sector / functional knowledge, and insight into external market developments / initiatives.
• Use interpretative thinking and advanced analytical skills to solve problems and design solutions in often complex/ sensitive situations.
• Exercise management authority to make significant decisions and certain strategic decisions or recommendations within own area.
• Negotiate with and influence stakeholders at a senior level both internally and externally.
• Act as principal contact point for key clients and counterparts in other functions/ businesses divisions.
• Mandated as a spokesperson for the function and business division.

All Senior Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.

Overview

• Are you looking to redefine customer experience by bending the curve of innovation in one of the most coveted domains, Banking & Financial Services Industry? Join our innovative team to build and deliver elevated customer experiences and streamline business operations with cutting-edge AI-driven solutions.
• As a Director of Applied AI, you will direct and oversee multi-disciplinary teams by providing technical expertise and strategies in order to design, build and deliver AI solutions that are scalable and secure. You will leverage your deep expertise to innovate for business impact, lead the strategic development for AI-driven business transformation across the organization, and establish a strong foundation for AI excellence.

Key Responsibilities:

• Direct and oversee the design, development, and implementation of GenAI & Agentic AI systems & solutions to build intelligent conversational AI and workflow automation.
• Own the technical roadmap for AI integration into core business products, ensuring alignment with organizational strategic priorities and measurable business value.
• Lead the establishment of strong foundations for AI excellence, accelerating innovation and consistency by creating common capabilities, best practices, and reusable frameworks.
• Develop best strategies and design patterns for state/session management, memory management, and artifact management essential to building powerful and reliable agents.
• Provide executive-level technical approval for critical architectural designs, deployment strategies on cloud for scale using agentic runtimes, and the implementation of robust CI/CD, DevSecOps, and observability.
• Implement guardrails and policy enforcement for safety and security risks required to comply with the organization’s data privacy and security standards.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify requirements and develop solutions to meet business needs within the organization.
• Communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, including senior leadership.

Required Qualifications:

• A Bachelor’s degree (or above) in computer science, engineering, mathematics, or a related discipline.
• 12+ years of experience in developing software applications for scale on cloud (AWS or Azure or GCP).
• 5+ years of experience leading technologists to manage, anticipate, and solve complex technical items within your domain of expertise.
• Proven experience leading large, cross-functional engineering teams to deliver solutions in the highly regulated Banking/Financial Services or similar industry.
• Fluent in Python or Java or GoLang programming language and frameworks.
• Familiarity and solid understanding of Large Language Models (LLMs), Agents, Planning, Reasoning, and other related methods.
• Hands-on experience in GenAI and AgenticAI frameworks such as LangGraph/LangChain, CrewAI, Strands SDK, Google ADK, etc. Familiarity on working with MCP and A2A protocols.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Knowledge of banking, financial products and services.
• Familiarity with model fine-tuning techniques such as supervised or Reinforced Learning.